Centro Studi Tci investigates the economic, employment and social consequences of coronavirus on Italian tourism for the 2020 season.
The analysis of the Centro Studi Tci first highlights how tourism in Italy, in the last 10 years, has shown a constantly growing trend, reaching 429 million overnight stays in 2018. The study also shows how domestic tourism has been affected by the economic crisis of 2008 while in the same period foreign tourism in Italy also showed increases of 30%. The data also indicate that, since 2017, incoming tourism represents 50.5% of the total. In detail, 79% of tourists comes from Europe, with a prevalence from Germany with 59 million overnight stays (27% of the presences). United States (14.5 million), France (14.2 million) and the United Kingdom (14millions) follow. China, with 5.3 million presences, occupies the 11th place.
54% of the total expenditure by foreign tourism is concentrated in Northern Italy, currently the part of the country most affected by the coronavirus. The seasonality also plays an important role since in foreign countries the tourist season does not begin with the closure of schools, as happens in Italy. The month of May, in fact, traditionally already sees several arrivals from abroad, in particular Germans on the occasion of Pentecost. It seems not easy, says the Centro Studi Tci, that the current situation and the general fight to the virus allow the Italian tourism system to return to normal in such a short time.
The data that come from air transport are not, in turn, comforting: the IATA, an association that represents about 90% of the world’s airlines, declares that, in mid-March, global traffic decreased by losing 54% of passengers . In Italy, because of the tightening restrictions already taken, air passenger traffic has fallen by 90%. The impact on Italian tourism of the non-arrival of tourists who reach our country by plane endangers 30% of incoming tourism, while the future changes in travel behavior of tourists are still unknown.
The standstill of demand puts the Italian tourism system, made up of 80% of small and medium-sized enterprises, in big trouble because, due to their size, they are not structured to face financially long periods of crisis and lack of demand. The services, says the analysis of Tci, are not storable and every overnight stay, guided tour, air ticket or other service that remains unsold is no longer recoverable for a company. Regardless of the time it will take to return to normal, tourism will be the sector, in Italy, that more than others will suffer the economic impact of the coronavirus with estimated losses of 30 to 70%, in the most pessimistic scenario.
Two interventions are outlined for the future: the rescue, on which the Italian government is trying to act to reduce the emergency, and the recovery, or how the Italian tourism system will respond, once the sanitary emergency will end. The study points on how to travel, a now globalized practice, will change in ways and times, how individuals’ behaviors will change when traveling. Will we be able, as during other alarms, such as the terrorist one, to change our behavior and resume traveling or will the pandemic completely upset the habits we know? Perhaps, the study concludes, the unexpected and brutal experience of isolation and global slowdown will help us better understand a world that, until a few weeks ago, we considered unchangeable and to review our role in it. Even the world of tourism could therefore find itself reasoning on more ethical and aware approaches.
Automatic check-in and check-out with the new CamperClean terminal